


towers of paperbacks (with all that I won't say)

by muppetstiefel



Series: personal best. [2]
Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Aged-Up Losers Club (IT), Car Accidents, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Miscommunication, Underage Smoking, mentions of depression
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-29
Updated: 2020-11-29
Packaged: 2021-03-09 19:09:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 826
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27781288
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/muppetstiefel/pseuds/muppetstiefel
Summary: "Beside him Stan shivers, folding in on himself. Bill wishes he were brave enough to throw an arm over his shoulder and pull him against his chest. To warm his blood and bring the two of them back to life.He doesn’t. Not now, not here, he reasons. Not when Stan won’t even look at him."
Relationships: Bill Denbrough/Stanley Uris
Series: personal best. [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2032387
Comments: 1
Kudos: 17





	towers of paperbacks (with all that I won't say)

They’re seventeen, sat on Stan’s window sill. It’s late October and the air has a bitter coldness to it, but Stan had insisted they sat outside, just like they always do. Bill shivers into his thin t-shirt, thinking of his coat slung over the coat stand at Stan’s front door. He plays with a cigarette between his thumb and forefinger, watching the cork tip dance in his hand. He could light it with the matches in his back pocket, attempt to warm himself up slightly with the smouldering tip. But Stan wouldn’t like that, so he just watches it spin instead.

He doesn’t even smoke. He hates the smell almost as much as Stan, and the ashy taste makes him feel sick. But Richie smokes, and he likes to pay for favours that way. Bill can never be bothered to correct him.

Beside him Stan sits, unmoving. His arms are linked around his legs, leaning forward a little so his face is fully in the wind. He hasn’t looked at Bill since he got here. He didn’t look at his mother either, when they passed her in the kitchen. He stares instead into nothingness, eyes flitting up to the tree in his back garden and then back down again, to the chipped white fence that encircles it.

Downstairs the faint final notes of Mozart drift on. Bill can picture Stan’s mother, folding the laundry beside their old Victrola. His father maybe, sat in front of their grated fireplace. The two of them, intertwined in an image of domestic bliss.

Beside him Stan shivers, folding in on himself. Bill wishes he were brave enough to throw an arm over his shoulder and pull him against his chest. To warm his blood and bring the two of them back to life.

He doesn’t. Not now, not here, he reasons. Not when Stan won’t even look at him.

“I crashed the car,” Stan says, although Bill already knows.

He’d been there three weeks early, when he finally got his permit. Stan had been so happy, so red in the face, clutching the brown envelop in a vice-like grip. Later, in the hallway near the Uris family bathroom, half cast into complete blackness, he had kissed Bill again.

He wasn’t there when he crashed the car. He heard from Richie. Heard how he had swerved to miss something in the middle of the road and planted himself firmly into a tree. Heard how he hit it just enough to the left that he was fine.

If anyone was sat in the passenger seat, Richie had said, it would be game over.

A scared, unreasonable part of Bill’s brain wishes he was in that passenger seat anyway.

He swallows and stills his fingers. “I know.”

Stan nods solemnly, like it’s final, but it’s not. He opens his mouth again. Pauses. Then, all at once he declares, “Part of me wanted to crash it.”

Bill knows that too. He wishes he didn’t, but he does. He sees the way Stan’s eyes skate over the road, hesitate on the window. Right now he leans just a little bit further out of the window than Bill, hands folded in his lap, body tilted away from safety.

Stan isn’t like Richie. He isn’t reckless, or stupid, or full of an uncontrollable need to live in the moment. It’s just sometimes he forgets he’s a person, made of flesh and bones. That he is squishy and malleable and something. He told Bill that once, when they were younger, after he ‘accidentally’ sliced his thumb open with his scissors. He had told Bill then that sometimes he felt like Nothing. Maybe crashing his car made him feel like Something.

Bill doesn’t nod this time. It’s too shameful to admit that he _knows_ , he _knew_ and yet Stan’s car bonnet still ended up impacted into a tree.

Stan isn’t going to say anything. Bill wishes he would say anything.

He pulls the matches out of his pocket and lights the cigarette, taking a sickening drag.

Stan says nothing, but his nose crinkles slightly in concealed disgust.

He’s a shell right now. One that’s cracked and curling away from its centre. Maybe tomorrow he’ll meld a little more, then a little more after that until he’s full again. Right now, Bill just has to do a shitty job at holding together the pieces.

“It’s a shame,” Bill manages through a shaky laugh. He takes another drag, coughing slightly before offering the cigarette to Stan. He declines. “I r-really fucking loved that car.”

Stan laughs at that, puffing out a short breath and shaking his head. Bill has never seen anything more beautiful.

He wants to reach out and touch him; his leg, his arm, further and further until he doesn’t know where he ends and Stan begins.

He wants to say the words that sit on the edge of his tongue. _“I really fucking love you.”_

But he doesn’t.

**Author's Note:**

> another drabble from a discarded draft. might make this into a series.
> 
> title from architecture by maisie peters.


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